demon Freetext

In the dark one morning, the Bloated Black Beast slowly rose to the water's surface. Whence it crested, great gouts of flame erupted from its Misshapen Form and were hurled hundreds of feet in all directions. It dove again, and appeared as nothing more than an Inky Shadow of Malice. With no purpose, It swam on; occasionally cresting and flaming, but still without purpose.

"Ladies and Gentleman, Children of all ages! Welcome to my Carnival! You will see sights to behold, and things beyond belief! Some may frighten you, and some may shock you, but its all in good fun! Please, stay a while…and watch."

"I don’t like that one. He’s creepy. There’s something not right in the head with him. Course, I don’t much imagine that’s uncommon here, but he goes further than the rest of ‘em. I think he actually *likes* what they do to him."

Great Magic and Ruination

With a huge number of sacrificial victims, another realm long ago secretly bound a Prince of the land spirits, Iorstonn by name, thus ensuring the fertility, and improving the magical defences, of their realm. But binding that Prince to one spot has disrupted the weather and magical patterns (ley lines?) over half the continent. Things have become bad enough that a coalition has been formed to rectify the situation, once divinations have established the cause.

Your party is one of the teams assembled to do the rectification: find the binding object and steal it ("so that we can destroy it here in our realm, of course"...*) or destroy it over there. Presumably the Prince will be grateful to his rescuers and angry at the binders, but with a greater spirit like Iorstonn one can never be sure: such beings are "tricksy".

* Of course, the rulers of our realm might want to control Iorstonn for their own ends...